Nearly 300 million devices now running iOS 6

Apple on Tuesday released its iOS 6.1 update for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, and revealed that almost 300 million devices have installed iOS 6 since it launched five months ago.

In a press release sent out on Tuesday, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller said: “iOS 6 is the world’s most advanced mobile operating system, and with nearly 300 million iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices on iOS 6 in just five months, it may be the most popular new version of an OS in history.”

With more than 500 million iOS devices sold in total, the new figures reveal that more than 60 percent of all devices are running iOS 6.

Back in October, about a month after its launch, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that 200 million devices were running iOS 6. This means that an additional 100 million devices have been updated in the four months since.

Many of these additional updates are likely to have occurred in December, when the launch of Google Maps for iPhone sparked a 29 percent rise in iOS 6 adoption, as many iPhone owners had held back from updating to the new operating system following the Apple Mapsgate.